"I reckon Mr. Gay has just as good a right to his things as we have to ours," she said.
"Right! Who wants his right?" flared Archie, turning upon her. "You'll say next, I reckon, that he had a right to split my upper lip open if he wanted to."
"From the way grandma carries on anybody would think that was what she wanted," persisted Blossom, adhering stubbornly to the point, "she sounds as if she were mad because people ain't everlastingly fighting."
"You needn't think I don't see what you're aimin' at, Keren-happuch," rejoined Sarah, who used this name only in moments of anger, "you're tryin' to make me think a grown man can't do anything better than get up in the pulpit and mouth texts so soft that a babe couldn't cut its teeth on 'em. You've had notions in yo' head about Orlando Mullen ever since he came here, an' you ain't fooled me about 'em."
"Thar, thar, don't you begin pesterin' Blossom," interposed Abner, aroused at last from his apathy.
"Notions about Mr. Mullen!" repeated Blossom, and though there was a hot flush in her face, her tone was almost one of relief.
CHAPTER IX
IN WHICH MOLLY FLIRTS
On a November morning several weeks later, when the boughs of trees showed almost bare against the sky, Molly Merryweather walked down to Bottom's store to buy a bottle of cough syrup for Reuben, who had a cold. Over the counter Mrs. Bottom, as she was still called from an hereditary respect for the house rather than for the husband, delivered a coarse brown paper. The store, which smelt of dry-goods and ginger snaps, was a small square room jutting abruptly out of the bar, from which it derived both its warmth and its dignity.
"Even men folks have got the sperit of worms and will turn at last," she remarked in her cheerful voice, which sounded as if it issued from the feather bed she vaguely resembled.